The Historians' History of the World 04

Mummius had not expected so easy a conquest, and, though informed that the gates were open, suspecting some stratagem, suffered an entire day to pass before he marched into the city. Though no resistance was offered, all the men found within the walls were put to the sword; the women and children were reserved for sale; and when all its treasures had been carried away, on a signal given by blast of the trumpet the city was consigned to the flames. So it is said the senate had expressly decreed. But vengeance for the insults offered to the Roman envoys was probably more the pretext than the motive for this cruelty. It was at least no less a crime in the eyes of the Roman soldiers that Corinth was the richest city of Greece. Scarcely any other was adorned with so many precious works of art. Mummius himself had as little eye for them as any of his men, who made dice-boards of the finest masterpieces of painting; but he knew that such things were highly valued by others, and he therefore preserved those which were accounted the choicest to embellish his triumph.

Before the arrival of the ten commissioners, who were sent in the autumn to regulate the state of Greece, he made a circuit in Peloponnesus to inflict punishment on the cities and persons that had taken an active share in the war. The walls of all such towns were dismantled, and their whole population disarmed. The adherents of Diæus were sentenced to death or exile, and their property confiscated; and the Achæans—that is, the cities which had contributed to the war—were condemned to pay two hundred talents [£40,000 or $200,000] to Sparta. The greater part of the Corinthian territory was annexed to Sicyon. Mummius afterwards marched northward to deal like retribution among the insurgents of Bœotia and Eubœa. He razed Thebes and Chalcis—or at least their walls—to the ground; condemned the Bœotians and Eubœans—or more probably those cities alone—to pay one hundred talents to Heraclea, which they had helped to besiege; and at Chalcis he shed so much blood of the principal citizens, that Polybius himself can only reconcile his conduct with the supposed mildness of his character by the suggestion that he was urged by his council to unwonted severity.

It remained for the ten commissioners, according to the instructions of the senate, to fix the future condition of the conquered nation. All Greece, as far as Macedonia and Epirus, was constituted a Roman province: and Achaia enjoyed the melancholy distinction of giving its name to the whole. But the senate’s jealousy was not satisfied with the formal establishment of its sovereignty; it had also decreed a series of regulations tending as much as possible to restrict every kind of union and intercourse among the Greeks, and to reduce them to the lowest stage of weakness and degradation. All federal assemblies, all democratical polities, were abolished, and the government of each city committed to a magistracy, for which a certain amount of property was required as a qualification. No one might acquire land in any part of the province but that in which his franchise lay. The details of this outline, and all temporary measures for the settlement of the country, were left to the discretion of Mummius and the Ten; and Polybius, who appears to have arrived in Greece soon after the fall of Corinth, was now able in some degree to alleviate the calamity which he had found it impossible to avert; and perhaps it would not have been equally in his power to render such services to his countrymen if he had been previously less alienated, at least in appearance, from the national cause. As the intimate friend of the conqueror of Carthage, he was treated with the highest respect and confidence; and he employed his influence so as to win the esteem and gratitude of his fellow-citizens. Mummius himself, when sated with bloodshed and rapine, showed a disposition to conciliate the vanquished. Before his departure, though he had removed the statue of the Isthmian Poseidon, to dedicate it—in gross violation of religious propriety—in the temple of Jupiter at Rome, he repaired the damage which had been done to the public buildings on the Isthmus, adorned the temples of Olympia and Delphi, and made a circuit round the principal Greek cities to receive tokens of their gratitude.